Join us for an engaging and timely virtual conversation with Dr. Ric Sheffield as part of our annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration series. 

MLK Jr. Celebration 2026 – Virtual Speaker Event

Date: Thursday, January 22, 2026
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. EST
Format: Virtual | Zoom

Cost: FREE and open to the public

Please register to attend and receive a Zoom link:
https://ohio.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3VFKsjcNZwu8sUS

About the Speaker
Drawing from decades of scholarship and his newest book, False Promises: The Struggle for Black Voting Rights in 1800s Ohio, Dr. Sheffield will explore the historical fight for Black suffrage in Ohio and its lasting relevance today.

Ric S. Sheffield, J.D., Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Legal Studies and Sociology at Kenyon College and a nationally respected scholar of race, law, and rural diversity. He is the author of We Got By: A Black Family’s Journey in the Heartland and the forthcoming False Promises: The Struggle for Black Voting Rights in 1800s Ohio (August 2025).

Dr. Sheffield has researched, taught, written, and lectured extensively on the Black experience in small-town America. He is co-director of the award-winning Community Within: Black Experience in Knox County, Ohio project and a founding director of the Knox County Black History Digital Archives. He has also served as co-director of the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s Oral History in the Liberal Arts program.

Before joining Kenyon College, Dr. Sheffield spent a decade as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Ohio, beginning his legal career as a civil rights attorney handling racial and sex discrimination cases and later serving as chief attorney of the state’s consumer protection division. He is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University, where he completed his undergraduate studies, graduate work in sociology, and law degree.

Dr. Sheffield is a longtime participant in the Ohio Humanities speakers’ bureau and has published widely on legal history, African American social history, and the intersections of law, race, and rural life.

About False Promises:

In False Promises, Dr. Sheffield brings to life the courageous stories of Black men in Ohio who challenged nineteenth-century voting restrictions in pursuit of full citizenship. Although the Fifteenth Amendment promised the right to vote, state election laws continued to deny that promise. Through historical records and carefully reconstructed narratives, the book reveals stories of sacrifice, resistance, and determination that shaped Ohio’s early civil rights history.